In a pinch

Tags

Adventure, awkward, crayfish, escape, pinch, stories, teaching, water, yabbies

Teaching is a stressful job.  Teaching a field ecology course, when you are stuck with your students 24/7 in a sometimes arduous conditions, can be extremely stressful.

So, when the other TA grabbed my hand one day after arguing with a student who was sick of rice and beans (for breakfast, lunch and dinner) and hissed in my ear, “Let’s get out of here!”, I went.  And gladly.

Giggling, she and I escaped from the drama of the students and ran off into the rain forest.  Checking to make sure no one was following, we followed a branch of the river inland, through a crack in a cliff face so narrow that we had to squeeze in sideways.

Walls of rock surrounded us on all sides, and there was just a crack of sky visible directly above.  At the base of a small, pleasantly noisy, waterfall, there was a quiet pool of water.  She and I stripped down to our swimming suits and jumped in.

It was delightfully cold, refreshing after the humidity of the jungle, and little shrimp scuttled over exposed skin, tickling us with delicate feathery appendages.

We sat on opposite sides of the pool and she vented about various annoyances and aggravations that had set her off, while I smiled and nodded happily.  I was happy that she had included me; I felt special to be on a secret adventure in a hidden ravine.

But just when we were settled and I was most content, something gave me a vary hard pinch in the rear.

“WHOOP!” I shouted, leaping off the underwater ledge I was sitting on and sliding into the deep pool.  Treading water and massaging my behind, I searched for the source of the pinch, but the ledge was completely clear.  She and I shrugged and I pulled myself back onto the ledge.

But it was no sooner had we started chatting again that I got another frightful pinch.  I jumped up again and shouted something unrepeatable, fumbling behind me on the rock to catch the perpetrator.

A crayfish wiggled in my fingers, pinched me hard on the thumb, and then scuttled off into the murk.  I scowled at it and attempted to return to my conversation.

But it was ill-fated!  The crayfish would not stop pinching me and the other TA could not stop laughing at my despair.

How assinine.*

*Yes, I realize that is misspelled.

Catchin’ Turkeys

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butterfly nets, day camps, nature centers, stories, teachable moments, teaching, wild turkeys

I used to work as a naturalist at a nature center in Nebraska.  Naturally (pun intended), this was a very enjoyable job for me.  I spent most of my time taking visitors on hikes in the woods and naming the plants and animals that we saw on our walks.  I got to do this every day, and people never got sick of it because they were always new people!  (Huzzah!)

I also spent a lot of time teaching day camps for children, which is very fun and, if you haven’t noticed, it has influenced the way I think a lot.  We sang songs about toads and dragonflies, hiked in the woods, and painted with leaves.  I think I had just as much fun as the five-year olds, and a great deal more than the pre-teens.

One day, I was leading a hike with seventeen 5 year old boys (as an aside, teaching 17 five year old boys is quite the challenge…their favourite game was tug of war with my arms, nine on the left and eight on the right!).

We were going butterfly catching, so the other day camp teacher and myself had equipped the boys with tiny plastic butterfly nets.

But as we came around a bend in the trail, we encountered a flock of enormous male wild turkeys, known as toms.  They were beautiful animals, fully decked out in iridescent breeding plumage, full of russet and chestnut browns.  But they were also huge!  They were, in fact, larger than most of our five year old charges.

The boys were the perfect size to count as a challenger of supremacy in the mind of the alpha gobbler, so he poofed up his feathers, dropped his wing tips and started slowly rounding on the first boy in line.

The other teacher and I shot a look at each other and began trying to shoo away the turkeys with the only thing available…our butterfly nets.

As we made pathetic shooing motions, two tiny old ladies wandered around the bend from the other direction.  Blinking at us owlishly in surprise, one exclaimed, “Are you trying to catch those turkeys?!”

With a butterfly net?

Reaching out

Tags

bumblebees, honeybees, insects, outreach, outreach event, pollination, reaching out, research, science, science communication, teaching, volunteer

I make these for children because children like to hold things and this is a very safe bee!

Sharing one’s research with others is one of the most important, and the most difficult, things for a scientist to do.  There are a lot of ways to communicate research to other scientists (conferences, posters, papers, seminars, abstracts, etc.), but I think many struggle to make their research accessible and appealing to people outside of their esoteric field.

And yet, how can research be valuable if it is not read by others?  There is research for research’s sake, of course, and it is valuable for furthering our knowledge base.  But I feel that, in most cases, it is critical to demonstrate how research can be applied to real problems.  Otherwise, scientists end up in an ‘ivory tower.’  (There was this hilarious Daily Show sketch about the topic, check it out if you have the time and need to laugh today.)

Many of the scientists at my uni study agricultural problems and we can talk directly with farmers, showing them how our research might inform the management of their fields to maximize yield and minimize environmental damage from pesticides and excessive fertilizer usage.

One can also give free public lectures…this being a university town, they are plentiful.  Some scientists communicate with the popular media (with varying levels of success), and some communicate with politicians to try and change policy at national levels.  I have known a couple of scientists who have even given congressional testimony.

But my favourite way of communicating my research to a broader audience involves volunteering to teach children.

Children (and parents) enjoying our display hive of honeybees at an outreach event.

Having worked at a nature center, I have a little bit of experience, and I enjoy working with children.  (Some of my friends tell me that I am good with children, I think the explanation for this is that I am very immature and think like a child.)

Looking for the queen.

Working with kids is fun because they get so excited about things.  One of the outreach activities I regularly volunteer in involves teaching children about insects.  I work in the “insect zoo” where I get to hold Australian walking sticks, tarantulas (not actually insects, but you know how it is) and Madagascar hissing cockroaches all day.

A very sweet tarantula on my wrist (we don't allow the children to hold her...mostly because she is fragile).

The kids never fail to shriek in alarm and delight when they see a 12 centimeter (~5 inches) walking stick sitting in total contentment on my head.  Some of them are brave enough to hold the insects themselves!

A brave child holding a harmless Australian walking stick.

I’ve taught classes about insects and pollinators to groups of students from the little-littles to the cool high schoolers who try to be apathetic about everything and ultimately fail (who try not to react with surprise when I teach them how to pet a bumblebee).

My conclusion is this: we are born with a love of nature and a wonder of natural things.  Encouraging and nurturing this love in children is a sure fire way to ensure that they are eager to protect the natural world!  But we must first reach out to them to share it.

Hands on

Tags

Animals, conservation, field biology, teaching

Field biologists, at least the ones I’ve known, tend to be pretty ‘hands on’ people.  They like to get dirty, muddy, sweaty, even bloody.  Covered in ticks, flicking leeches at each other over cold beers at the end of a rough day.

This love of going waist deep and all in tends to come with a passion and curiosity for living things.  So, combine the two and you get people who love to hold wild animals.

A student with a blue-crowned manakin (Lepidothrix coronata)

Sometimes I feel a teensy bit conflicted about this.  I have a deeply ingrained respect for wild animals, and I often feel that they should be left alone unless we must bother them: for example, to understand their distributions, population dynamics, or the threats facing them (in short, for science).

Mexican Mouse Possum (Marmosa mexicana)

But the simple truth of the matter is that nothing is quite as touching as, well, touching an animal.  After seeing the looks on my students’ faces when they held wild lizards, frogs, and birds in their hands, how could I quibble?

How can you argue with this face?

Or this one?

Or this one?

I’d like to think that these students will drive future conservation efforts.  Their love for wildlife, instilled in them by their hands on experiences, will be the energy behind the movement to preserve what is left of our natural world.

Without passion like theirs, such an effort would surely fail.  That is why it is so important for us to touch their hearts.  And sometimes you can just see it on their face, that they are touched.

Or at least that’s what I hope.

Oh dear, you have a little something there...on your face there.

Pura vida

Tags

biological station, cloud forest, Costa Rica, estacion biologica, margay, teaching

Wow, Costa Rica, just wow.  Honestly you are heaven on Earth for a biologist.

What can I say?  The field course I taught in Costa Rica was like a fantastic dream come true.  I have longed to go there since I was eight years old and read a National Geographic article on Monteverde’s cloud forests.  And now I have gone, and I never wanted to leave.

I have so many new stories to share, too.  I figured I could spread them out over time.

We spent our first few days in a cloud forest very close to Monteverde, but without all of the tourists.  The Alberto Manuel estacion biologica or Rodolfo Ortiz Vargas estacion biologica (also known as the San Ramon biological station) was founded in 1975.  The acronym is ReBAMB.  (I don’t know why the station has so many names…probably because it is so awesome).  The altitude at San Ramon was between 800 and 1600 m.

The front door to the biological station.

There are 22 families of mammiferos (mammals), 30 especies of anfibios (amphibians), 36 especies of reptiles, 233 especies of aves (birds), and 1,150 especies of plantas in the reserve, which is threatened by illegal dam building, hunting, and removal of plants to be sold as ornamentals worldwide.  Many classes of international students are taught at la estacion.  As we were leaving, a new class was coming from Kent State University.

There were a lot of beautiful (and slightly treacherous with slippery rounded boulders) rivers and streams around.  We went for a swim in a waterfall, which I thought was rather pleasant, but my students complained was frigid.

Some of my students sampling aquatic insects in a stream.

A cloud forest, if you’ve never been in one, is a unique ecosystem.  You are almost constantly in a cloud, which makes photography, among other things, a bit challenging.  You are never dry, which is typical for a rainforest anyway.

Students exploring the cloud forest.

Cloud forests have tons of mosses and epiphytes (plants living in the canopy) which survive only on the water provided by the clouds.  You can see that the tree trunks in these photos are completely green with life.  I really enjoyed sharing my passion for ecology with these students.  I loved to see their wonder and appreciation.

A student admiring a long horned beetle (Cerambycid)

We also went on a lot of night hikes while we were there, so we had a chance to enjoy the night life.

Katydid camouflage

Norops biporcatus (an Anole lizard), sleeping

Ta da!

Mexican mouse possum (Marmosa mexicana)

 

And, perhaps most thrillingly, we saw a margay (or caucel)!

Margay (Leopardus wiedii)

The reserve is a real refuge for these cats, as well as jaguars, pumas, and ocelots, which we saw many tracks of, although we did not ‘spot’ the cats themselves.

And I loved the ticos (Costa Ricans) who worked at the reserve.  I didn’t get great photos of them all, but they are all lovely people.

Jose and Hugo

More stories to come!